There is a spectacular diamond in the Smithsonian Collection called the Blue Heart Diamond. Fans of the movie Titanic might think the “Heart of the Ocean Diamond” was based on this stone, and it may have been! However, this diamond hasn’t been cast in the ocean, but is safe and sound at the Smithsonian!
It has also been called the Eugenie Blue Diamond, although it’s uncertain that the Empress Eugenie ever owned this particular stone. It was cut in Paris between 1909 and 1910, but the stone’s origin – Africa or India – is unclear.
It is an enormous heart-shaped, blue diamond weighing 30.82 carats. Its current setting is in a platinum ring, surrounded by white diamonds. It changed hands among famous jewelers – such as Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels – and owners until it was bought by Harry Winston in 1959 who mounted the diamond in its current ring setting. Winston sold the ring to Marjorie Merriweather Post. Mrs. Post donated the ring to the Smithsonian and it remains there with other famous blue diamonds, including the Hope Diamond and the Heart of Eternity Diamond.
These famous blue diamonds have recently gone through a grading and examination process, to classify their colors and to determine the source of the color. The Hope Diamond is classified as Fancy Deep Grayish-Blue. The Heart of Eternity has been classified as a Fancy Vivid Blue. The Blue Heart Diamond has not yet been classified, but some experts categorize it as either Fancy Vivid Blue or Fancy Deep Blue. Blue diamonds are of particular interest to scientists not only because of the color and the impurities that create it, but because blue diamonds also have an electric conductive property that makes them unique among clear and other colored diamonds.
There were a few benefits to marrying the Emperor Napoleon, if you loved jewelry, that is! The Marie-Louise diadem, now part of the Smithsonian Collection, was a wedding gift from Napoleon I to his second wife, Empress Marie-Louise in 1810. The diadem was originally part of a set that also included a necklace, comb, belt buckle, and earrings, all made of emeralds and diamonds set in silver and gold. They were all made by French Jeweler Etienne Nitot et Fils of Paris.
In the original diadem, there were 22 large and 57 small emeralds, along with 1002 brilliant-cut and 66 rose-cut diamonds. The central emerald weighed 12 carats. After the fall of the Emperor, Marie-Louise fled to Vienna and took her personal jewelry with her, including the diadem and other pieces that were made as part of a set, including a necklace, a pair of earrings and a comb.
Empress Marie-Louise left the diadem to her Hapsburg aunt, Archduchess Elise. Archduke Karl Stefan Hapsburg of Sweden, a descendent of the Archduchess sold the set to Van Cleef & Arpels in 1953. Between May 1954 and June 1956, the emeralds were removed and sold individually in pieces of jewelry as emeralds “from the historic Napoleon Tiara.”
Between 1956 and 1962, Van Cleef & Arpels mounted turquoise cabochons into the diadem. In 1962, the diadem was displayed in the Louvre in Paris with the necklace, earrings, and comb in an exhibit about Empress Marie-Louise. In 1971, Marjorie Merriweather Post, heiress to the Post cereal fortune, purchased the diadem for the Smithsonian Institution. There are 1,006 mine-cut diamonds weighing a total of 700 carats and 79 Persian turquoise stones weighing a total of 540 carats. In one respect, it’s a shame that the original piece was dismantled to sell off the emeralds. Yet the diadem, reset with the turquoise cabochons is equally beautiful and made even more distinctive with the use of the less valuable turquoise.
There’s no more fascinating subject in history than the doomed French Queen Marie Antoinette. Much maligned by history (she never said “Let them eat cake,” in response to the people’s need for bread), she was an unwilling part of the one of the greatest revolutions in history. And met an untimely end at the guillotine in 1793. While she loved jewelry, and possessed many magnificent jewels, she often preferred simple muslin gowns and very little jewelry. Many of the portraits of her by Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun show her dressed just like that.
Two large, pear-shaped diamond earrings, weighing 14.25 and 20.34 carats respectively, are part of the Smithsonian Institution’s collection. The diamonds once were supposedly set in earrings that belonged to Marie Antoinette and some sources say they were her favorite pieces of jewelry and she wore them constantly. They were taken from her during an attempt to flee France as the Revolution dawned and the position of the Royals became dangerous.
The diamonds were later acquired by the Grand Duchess Tatiana Yousupoff of Russia. When jeweler Pierre Cartier puchased the diamond earrings in 1928, their authenticity was attested to in an affidavit by Russian Princess Zenaide Yousupoff and her son, Prince Felix Yousupoff, stating that they originally belonged to Queen Marie-Antoinette and have never been reset in the one hundred years that they were in the family. Marjorie Merriweather Post acquired the earrings from Pierre Cartier in October 1928. Harry Winston reset the large diamonds in platinum replicas of the original silver settings in 1959. Cartier, Inc. designed the triangular tops. In November 1964, Mrs. Post’s daughter, Mrs. Eleanor Barzin, donated the earrings, along with the original setting to the Smithsonian Institution. The diamonds are originally from India or Brazil, the only significant sources of diamonds in the eighteenth century.
One doesn’t normally associate beautiful jewelry with the time of the Spanish Inquisition. But in the Smithsonian Institution’s collection of gems, there is an exquisite necklace of diamonds and emeralds.
It is a spectacular double row of diamonds and emeralds ending in a chandelier of emeralds. There is unfortunately very little information about the provenance of this necklace. The large diamonds and Columbian emeralds were most likely cut in India in the 17th century. This would make them one of the earliest examples of cut gemstones in the Smithsonian’s Collection. There are really only legends surrounding this necklace. They indicate that it was worn at times by Spanish and French royalty. In the early 20th century, it was purchased by the Maharajah of Indore, whose son sold the necklace in 1947 to Harry Winston. Winston subsequently sold the necklace to Mrs. Cora Hubbard Williams of Pittsburgh. She bequeathed it to the Smithsonian in 1972.
Emeralds are a form of crystal known as beryls. Beryls are normally clear crystals, but when infused with chromium or vanadium, they attain various gradations of green. The purest green are the rarest emeralds and many people actually prefer an emerald that has a blue-green tint.
Before the 16th century, the only known emerald deposits were in Cleopatra’s Egyptian mines. But after emeralds were discovered in Columbia, those became the “gold standard” in emeralds. Columbian emeralds have been discovered by archaeologists among artifacts of such tribes as the Inca, Maya, Aztec, Toltec and the lesser-known Chibcha Indians. Emeralds are among the rarest of gemstones and can be more expensive per carat than even the finest diamonds! They are a hard mineral, with a Moh’s hardness scale of 7 or 8 (compared to a diamond’s 10). While most emeralds are found in Africa, Russia and Africa, there have been discoveries of emerald deposits in North Carolina!